Nguyén Trung Tanh (Bién soan) Trich gidng van hoc My READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE A COLLEGE - LEVEL LITERATURE COURSE BOOK II Compiled by NGUYEN TRUNG TANH NHA XUAT BAN THANH PHO HO CHi MINHCONTENTS PART | : FICTION 1. Stories with Commentaries Ernest Hemingway The Killers William Faulkner A Rose for Emily James Thurber The Secret Life of Walter ey 2. Stories for Analysis Ernest Hemingway A Clean, Well-lighted Place Willa Cather The Sculptor’s Funeral 3. Stories for Study Sherwood Anderson The Strength of God The Teacher Sophistication Ernest Hemingway Old Man at the Bridge F. Scott Fitzgerald The Sensible Thing Thomas Wolf Man's Youth Hunger to Devour the Earth Saul Bellow The Adventures Of Augie March (Excerpts) 2 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book Ii 101 102 103 112 121 135 135 139 140 159 166 175 7.O.Henry The Cop and the Anthem Kate Chopin A Respectable Woman PART Il : NONFICTION Ernest Hemingway Speech On Receiving The Nobel Prize True Nobility Martin Luther King "l Have @ Dream" Speech The Nobel Peace Prize Speech Dwight David Eisenhower An Open Letter to America’s Students Sherwood Anderson Discovery of A Father PART Ill : POETRY Walt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer A Noiseless Patient Spider On The Beach At Night Alone There Was @ Child Went Forth Chant 6 from "Song of Myself" Chant 48 from "Song of Myself" Chant 52 from "Song of Myself" 185 186 194 195 204 205 207 208 210 214 214 221 READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book Il - 3PART I FICTION 4 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |iSTORIES WITH COMMENTARIES READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 5If a writer of prose knows enough about what he’s writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the readers, if their writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of these things as strongly as though the writer has stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice - berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above the water. -Ernest Hemingway 6 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book IiERNEST HEMINGWAY 1899 - 1961 Ernest Miller Hemingway was born at Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He attended the public schools there but had no further formal education. As a young man he commenced the life of high and romantic adventure that he pursued throughout his life. He volunteered for ambulance duty in World War I and served on the Italian front, from which experiences he wrote his best novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929). He became an enthusiastic participant in various sporting pursuits, including big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing; he was an aficionado of bullfighting, as reflected in several of his books; and he participated in the Spanish Civil War, about which he wrote his book For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). From his ambulance duty in World War I Hemingway went to Paris, where he was influenced to some extent by Gertrude Stein, though the degree may not have been as great as her own writings have indicated. From his life among the young émigrés in Paris he wrote his first successful novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which established him as the principal spokesman of the "lost generation," that group of young men and women disillusioned and left without direction by the breakdown of established society that attended World War I and followed in its wake. Long before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954, Hemingway was generally ranked among the top novelists of his century. John O’Hara called him the greatest writer of English since Shakespeare, though O'Hara, his disciple, may be the only novelist better than Hemingway in the recording of casual dialogue. Hemingways influence on other writers was and remains matchless. He was the principal apostle and to a certain extent the creator of the style called "modern American," an approach to writing in which the writing itself is terse, simple, and unadorned, and all emotion or sentiment must be developed through the narrative and not through extravagance in the mode of its expression. Especially in The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms,and some of his short stories (which by some critics are more admired than his novels), Hemingway often achieves a heart-rending effect in a READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book {| - 7series of brief sentences constructed of simple words in the most natural syntax. The Sun Also Rises is @ story of temporary expatriates from the United States and England living on cheap francs in the Paris of the early 1920s, and of their excursion to Spain; the title is from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. A Farewell to Arms is a love story set in wartime Italy and contains a justly celebrated account of the Italian defeat at Caporetto; For Whom the Bell Tolls has as its principal message the idea that war cannot be isolated but affects everyone, even those who wish to be neutral or nonbelligerent. Its title is from a sermon by John Donne, in a passage beginning "No man is an island ..." 8 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book IiERNEST HEMINGWAY The Killers THE door of Henry's lunehroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. “What's yours ?" George asked them. "| don’t know," one of the men said. "What do you want to eat, Al?" "L don’t know," said Al. "I don’t know what I want to eat." Outside it was getting dark. The street light came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menu. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them. He had been talking to George when they came in. "Pll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes," the first man said. "It isn’t ready yet." "What the hell do you put it on the card for 2" "That's the dinner," George explained. "You can get that at six o'clock." George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter. "It’s five o’clock." "The clock says twenty minutes past five," the second man said. “It's twenty minutes fast." "Oh, to hell with the clock," the first man said. "What have you got to eat ?" "| can give you any kind of sandwiches," George said. "You can have ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver and bacon, or a steak." "Give me chicken croquettes with green peas and cream sauce and mashed potatoes." "That's the dinner." "Everything we want's the dinner, eh ? That's the way you work it." "I can give you ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver-" READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 9"Til take ham and eggs," the man called Al said. He wore a derby hat and a black overcoat buttoned across the chest. His face was small and white and he had tight lips. He wore a silk muffler and gloves. "Give me bacon and eggs," said the other man. He was about the same size as Al. Their faces were different, but they were dressed like twins. Both wore overcoats too tight for them. They sat leaning forward, their-elbows on the counter. "Got anything to drink 2" Al asked. "Silver beer, bevo, ginger ale," George said. "I mean you got anything to drink ?" "Just those I said." "This is a hot town," said the other. "What do they call it ?" "Summit." "Ever hear of it 2" Al asked his friend. "No," said the friend. "What do you do here nights ?" Al asked. "They eat the dinner," his friend said. "They all come here and eat the big dinner." "That's right," George said. "So you think that’s right ?" Al asked George. "Sure." "You're a pretty bright boy, aren’t you 2" "Sure," said George. "Well, you're not," said the other little man. "Is he, Al 2" "He’s dumb," said Al. He turned to Nick. "What’s your name ?" "Adams." "Another bright boy," Al said. "Ain’t he a bright boy, Max ?" "The town’s full of bright boys," Max sdid. George put the two platters, one of ham and eggs, the other of bacon and eggs, on the counter. He set down two side dishes of fried potatoes and closed the wicket into the kitchen. "Which is yours ?" he asked Al. "Don’t you remember ?" "Ham and eggs." 10 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |!"Just a bright boy," Max said. He leaned forward and took the ham. and eggs. Both men ate with their gloves on. George watched them eat. "What are you looking at ?" Max looked at George. "Nothing." "The hell you were. You were looking at me." "Maybe the boy meant it for a joke, Max," Al said. George laughed. "You don’t have to laugh," Max said to him. "You don’t have to laugh at all, see ?" "All right," said George. "So he thinks it’s all right." Max turned to Al. "He thinks it’s all right. That’s a good one." "Oh, he’s a thinker," Al said. They went on eating. "What's the bright boy’s name down the counter ?" Al asked Max. "Hey, bright boy," Max said to Nick. "You go around on the other side of the counter with your boy friend.” "What's the idea ?" Nick asked. "There isn’t any idea." "You better go around, bright boy," Al said. Nick went around behind the counter. "What’s the idea ?" George asked. “None of your damn business," Al said. "Who's out in the kitchen ?" "The nigger." "What do you mean the nigger ?” "The nigger that cooks." "Tell him to come in." "What's the idea ?" "Tell him to come in." "Where do you think you are ?" "We know damn well where we are," the man called Max said, "Do we look silly ?" "You talk silly," Al said to him. "What the hell do you argue with this kid for ? Listen," he said to George, "tell the nigger to come out here." READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |! - 11"What are you going to do to him ?" "Nothing. Use your head, brightboy. What would we do to anigger?" George opened the slit that opened back into the kitchen. "Sam," he called. "Come in here a minute." The door to the kitchen opened and the nigger came in. "What was it ?" he asked. The two men at the counter took a look at him. "All right, nigger. You stand right there," Al said. Sam, the nigger, standing in his apron, looked at the two men sitting at the counter. "Yes, sir," he said. Al got down from his stool. "Pm going back to the kitchen with the nigger and bright boy," he said. "Go on back to the kitchen, nigger. You go with him, bright boy.” The little man walked after Nick and Sam, the cook, back into the kitchen. The door shut after them. The man called Max sat at the counter opposite George. He didn’t look at George but looked in the mirror that ran along back of the counter. Henry’s had been made over from a saloon into a lunch counter. "Well, bright boy," Max said, looking into the mirror, "why don’t you say something 2" "What's it all about ?" "Hey, Al," Max called, "bright boy wants to know whatit’s all about." "Why don’t you tell him ?" Al’s voice came from the kitchen. "What do you think it’s all about 2" "I don’t know." "What do you think ?" Max looked into the mirror all the time he was talking. "I wouldn’t say." "Hey, Al, bright boy says he wouldn’t say what he thinks it’s all about." “Il can hear you, all right," Al said from the kitchen. He had propped open the slit that dishes passed through into the kitchen with a catsup bottle. "Listen, bright boy," he said from the kitchen to George. "Stand a little further along the bar. You move a little to the left, Max." He was like a photographer arranging for a group picture. "Talk to me, bright boy," Max said. "What do you think’s going to happen ?" 12 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |!George did not say anything. "Pil tell you," Max said. "We're going to kill a Swede. Do you know a big Swede named Ole Andreson ?" pyesin "He comes here to eat every night, don’t he ?" "Sometimes he comes here." "He comes here at six o'clock, dont’ he ?" "If he comes." "We know all that, bright boy," Max said. "Talk about something else. Ever go to the movies ?" "Once in a while." "You ought to go to the movies more. The movies are fine for a bright boy like you." i "What are you going to kill Ole Andreson for ? What did he ever do to you ?" "He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us." "And he’s only going to see us once," Al said from the kitchen. "What are you going to kill him for, then ?" George asked. "We're killing him for a friend. Just to oblige a friend, bright boy." "Shut up," said Al from the kitchen. "You talk too goddamn much." "Well, | got to keep bright boy amused. Don’t |, bright boy ?" "You talk too damn much," Al said. "The nigger and my bright boy are amused by themselves. I got them tied up like a couple of girl friends in a convent." "| suppose you were in a convent." "You never know." "You were in a kosher convent. That's where you were." George looked up at the clock. "If anybody comes in you tell them the cook is off, and if they keep after it, you tell them you'll go back and cook yourself. Do you get that, bright boy ?" “All right," George said. "What you going to do with us afterward ?" "That'll depend," Max said. "That's one of those things you never READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book I! - 13know at the time." George looked up at the clock. It was a quarter past six. The door from the street opened. A street-car motorman came in. "Hello, George," he said. "Can I get supper ?" "Sam's gone out," George said. "He'll be back in about half an hour." "I'd better go up the street," the motorman said. George looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes past six. "That was nice, bright boy," Max said. "You're a regular little gentleman." "He knew I'd blow his head off," Al said from the kitchen. said Max. "It ain’t that. Bright boy is nice. He’s a nice boy. I like him." At six-fifty-five George said : "He’s not coming." Two other people had been in the lunchroom. Once George had gone out to the kitchen and made a ham-and-egg sandwich "to go" that a man wanted to take with him. Inside the kitchen he saw Al, his derby hat tipped back, sitting on a stool beside the wicket with the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun resting on the ledge. Nick and the cook were back to back in the corner, a towel tied in each of their mouths, George had cooked the sandwich, wrapped it up in oiled paper, put it in a bag, brought it in, and the man had paid for it and gone out. "Bright boy can do everything," Max said. "He can cook and everything. You’d make some girl a nice wife, bright boy." "Yes ?" George said. "Your friend, Ole Andreson, isn’t going to come." "We'll give him ten minutes," Max said. Max watched the mirror and the clock. The hands of the clock marked seven o'clock, and then five minutes Past seven. "Come on, Al," said Max. "We better go. He’s not coming." "Better give him five minutes," Al said from the kitchen. In the five minutes a man came in, and George explained that the cook was sick. "Why the hell don’t you get another cook ?" the man asked, “Aren't you running a lunch counter ?" He went out. "Come on, Al," Max said. "What about the two bright boys and the nigger ?" 14 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book Ii"They're all right." | "You think so ?" "Sure. We're through with it.” "| don’t like it," said Al. "It’s sloppy. You talk too much." "Oh, what the hell," said Max. "We got to keep amused, haven't ‘we 2" "You talk too much, all the same," Al said. He came out from the kitchen. The cut-off barrels of the shotgun on a slight bulge under the waist of his too tight-fitting overcoat. He straightened his coat with his gloved hands. "So long, bright boy," he said to George. "You got a lot of luck." "That's the truth," Max said. "You ought to [play the races, bright boy." The two of them went out the door. George watched them, through the window, pass under the arc light and cross the street. In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team. George went back through the swinging door into the kitchen and untied Nick and the cook. | "| don’t want any more of that," said Sai the cook. "I don’t want any more of that," Nick stood up. He had never had a tw in his mouth before. "Say," he said. "What the hell ?" He was trying to swagger it off. "They were going to kill Ole Andreson," George said. "They were going to shoot him when he came in to eat." "Ole Andreson ?" "Sure." The cook felt the corners of his mouth with his thumbs. "They all gone ?" he asked. "Yeah," said George. "They're gone now." "| don’t like it," said the cook. "I don’t like any of it at all.” "Listen," George said to Nick. "You better go see Ole Andreson." “All right." "You better not have anything to do with it at all," Sam, the cook, said: "You better stay way out of it." “Don’t go if you don’t want to," George said. READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 15"Mixing up in this ain’t going to get you anywhere," the cook said. "You stay out of it." "Tl go see him," Nick said to George. "Where does he live ?" The cook turned away. "Lite boys always know what they want to do," he said. "He lives up at Hirsch’s rooming house," George said to Nick. "Pll go up there." Outside the arc light shone through the bare branches of a tree. Nick walked up the street beside the car tracks and turned at the next arc light down a side street. Three houses up the street was Hirsch’s rooming house. Nick walked up the two steps and pushed the bell. A woman came to the door. "Is Ole Andreson here ?" "Do you want to see him ?" "Yes, if he’s in." Nick followed the woman up a flight of stairs and back to the end of a corridor. She knocked on the door. "Who is it 2" "It's somebody to see you, Mr. Andreson," the woman said. "It’s Nick Adams." "Come in.” Nick opened the door and went into the room. Ole Andreson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He had been a heavyweight prize-fighter and he was too long for the bed. He lay with his head on two pillows. He did not look at Nick. "What was it?" he asked. "L was up at Henry’s," Nick said, "and two fellows came in and tied up me and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you." It sounded silly when he said it. Ole Andreson said nothing. "They put us out in the kitchen," Nick went on. "They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper." Ole Andreson looked at the wall and did not say anything. "George thought I better come and tell you about it.” "There isn’t anything I can do about it," Ole Andreson said. 16 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |!"Tl tell you what they were like." "| don’t want to know what they were like," Ole Andreson said. He looked at the wall. "Thanks for coming to tell me about it.” "That's all right.” Nick looked at the big man lying on the bed. "Don’t you want me to go and see the police ?" "No," Ole Andreson said. "That wouldn't do any good." "Isn’t there something I could do ?" "No. There ain’t anything to do." "Maybe it was just a bluff." "No. It ain’t just a bluff." Ole Andreson rolled over toward the wall. "The only thing is," he said, talking toward the wall, "I just can’t make up my mind to go out. | been in here all day." "Couldn't you get out of town ?" "No," Ole Andreson said. "I’m through with all that running around." He looked at the wall. "There ain’t anything to do now." "Couldn’t you fix it up some way ?" "No. | got in wrong." He talked in the same flat voice. "There ain’t anything to do. After a while I'll make up my mind to go out.” "I better go back and see George," Nick said. "So long,” said Ole Andreson. He did not look toward Nick. "Thanks for coming around." Nick went out. As he shut the door he saw Ole Andreson with all his clothes on, lying on the bed looking at the wall. "He’s been in his room all day," the landlady said downstairs. "I guess he don’t feel well. I said to him : ’Mr. Andreson, you ought to go out and take a walk on a nice fall day like this,’ but he didn’t feel like at "He doesn’t want to go out." "Pm sorry he don’t feel well," the woman said. "He’s an awfully nice man. He was in the ring, you know." "| know it." READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 17"You'd never know it except from the way his face is," the woman said. They stood talking just inside the street door. "He's just as gentle." "Well, good-night, Mrs. Hirsch," Nick said. "I'm not Mrs. Hirsch," the woman said. "She owns the place. | just look after it for her. I'm Mrs. Bell." "Well, good-night, Mrs. Bell," Nick said. "Good-night," the woman said. Nick walked up the dark street to the corner under the arc light, and then along the car tracks to Henry’s eating house. George was inside, back of the counter. "Did you see Ole ?" "Yes," said Nick. "He’s in his room and he won't go out." The cook opened the door from the kitchen when he heard Nick’s voice. "I don’t even listen to it," he said and shut the door. "Did you tell him about it ?" George asked. "Sure. I told him but he knows what it’s all about." "What's he going to do ?" “Nothing.” "They'll kill him." "I guess they will." "He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago." "I guess so," said Nick. "It’s a hell of a thing." "It's an awful thing," Nick said. They did not say anything. George reached down for a towel and wiped the counter. "| wonder what he did ?" Nick said. "Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for." "I'm going to get out of this town," Nick said. "Yes," said George. "That’s a good thing to do." "I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.” "Well," said George, "you better not think about it." 18 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book IiINTERPRETATION There are certain fairly obvious points to be made about the technique of this story. It breaks up into one long scene and three short scenes. Indeed, the method is so thoroughly scenic that not over three or four sentences are required to make the transitions. The focus of narration is objective throughout, practically all information being conveyed in simple realistic dialogue. In the first scene the revelation of the mission of the gangsters is accomplished through a few significant details - the fact that the gangsters eat with gloves (to avoid leaving fingerprints), the fact that they keep their eyes on the mirror behind the bar, the fact that, after Nick and the cook have been tied up, the gangster who has the shotgun at the service window stations his friend and George out front "like a photographer arranging for a group picture". all of this before the specific nature of their mission is made clear. Other observations concerning the technique of the story could be made - the cleverness of composition, the subtlety with which the suspense is maintained in the first scene by the banter of the gangsters, and then is transferred to another level in the second scene. But such observations, though they are worth making, do not answer the first question which, to the reader, usually presents itself, or should be allowed to present itself. That question is : what is the story about ? The importance of giving an early answer to this question is indicated by the fact that a certain kind of reader, upon first acquaintance with the story, is inclined to feel that the story is exhausted in the first scene, and in fact that the first scene itself does not come to focus - does not have a "point". Another kind of reader sees that the first scene, with its lack of resolution, is really being used to "charge" the second scene. He finds his point in Ole Andreson’s decision not to try to escape the gangsters - to stop "all that running around". This reader feels that the story should end here. He sees no relevance in the last several pages of the story, and wonders why the author has flattened out his effect. The first reader we may say, feels that "The Killers" is the gangsters’ story - a story of action which does not come off. The second and more sophisticated reader interprets it as READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 19Andreson’s story, though perhaps with some wonder that Andreson’s story has been approached so indirectly and is allowed to trail off so irrelevantly. In other words, the reader is inclined to transpose the question, What is the story ? into the question, Whose story is it? When. he states the question in this way, he confronts the fact that Hemingway has left the story focused not on the gangsters, nor on Andreson, but on the boys at the lunchroom. Consider the last sentences of the story: "lm going to get out of this town," Nick said. "Yes," said George. "That’s a good thing to do." "I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful." "Well," said George, "you better not think about it." So, of the two boys, it is obviously Nick on whom the impression has been made. George has managed to come to terms with the situation. By this line of reasoning, it is Nick’s story. And the story is about the discovery of evil. The theme, ina sense, is the Hamlet theme, or the theme of Sherwood Anderson’s "I Want to Know Why". This definition of the theme of the story, even if it appears acceptable, must, of course, be tested against the detailed structure. In evaluating the story, as well as in understanding it, the skill with which the theme has been assimilated must be taken into account. For instance, to put a concrete question : does the last paragraph of the story illuminate for the reader certain details which had, at their first appearance, seemed to be merely casual, realistic items ? If we take the theme to be the boy’s discovery of evil, several such details do find their fulfillment and meaning. Nick had been bound and gagged by the gangsters, and has been released by George. To quote : "Nick stood up. He had never had a towel in his mouth before. ’Say,’ he said. What the hell ?’ He was trying to swagger it off." Being gagged was something you read about in a thriller and not something which happened to you; and the first effect is one of excitement, almost pleasurable, certainly an excuse for a manly pose. (It may be worth noting in this connection that Hemingway uses the specific word towel and not the general word gag. It is true that the word fowel has a certain sensory advantage over the word gag - because it suggests the 20 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book IIcoarseness of the fabric and the unpleasant drying effect on the membranes of the mouth. But this advantage in immediacy is probably overshadowed by another : the towel is sanctified in the thriller as the gag, and here that cliché of the thriller has come true.) The way the whole incidentis given- "He had never hada towel in his mouth before"- charges the apparently realistic detail as a pointer to the final discovery. Another pointer appears in the gangster’s wisecrack about the movies : "You ought to go to the movies more. The movies are fine for a bright boy like you." In one sense, of course, the iterated remarks about the movies, coming just after the gangsters have made their arrangements in the lunchroom, serve as a kind of indirect exposition: the reader knows the standard reason and procedure for gang killings. But at another level, these remarks emphasize the discovery that the unreal clichés of horror have a reality. The boy to whom the gangster speaks understands the allusion to the movies, for he immediately asks : "What are you going to kill Ole Andreson for ? What did he ever do to you ?" "He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us," the gangster replies. The gangster accepts, and even glories a little in, the terms by which he lives-terms which transcend the small-town world. He lives, as it were, by a code, which lifts him above questions of personal likes or personal animosities. This unreal code-unreal because it denies the ordinary personal elements of life - has, like the gag, suddenly been discovered as real. This unreal and theatrical quality is reflected in the description of the gangsters as, after leaving the lunchroom, they go out under the arc light and cross the street : "In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team." It even permeates their dialogue. The dialogue itself has the sleazy quality of mechanized gag and wisecrack, a kind of inflexible and stereotyped banter that is always a priori to the situation and overrides the situation. On this level the comparison to the vaudeville team is a kind of explicit summary of details which have been presented more indirectly and dramatically. On another level, the weary and artificial quality of their wit has a grimmer implication. It is an index to the professional casualness with which they accept a situation which to the boys is shocking. They are contemptuous and even bored, with the contempt and boredom of the initiated when confronted by callow READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book |! - 21lay observers. This code, which has suddenly been transferred from the artificial world of the thriller and movie into reality, is shocking enough, but even more shocking to Nick is the fact that Ole Andreson, the hunted man, accepts the code too. Confronted by the news which Nick brings, he rejects all the responses which the boy would have considered normal : he will not call the police; he will not regard the thing as a mere bluff; he will not leave town. "Couldn’t you fix it up some way ?" the boy asks. "No. | got in wrong." As we observed earlier, for a certain type of reader this is the high point of the story, and the story should end here. If one is to convince such a reader that the author is right in proceeding, one is obligated to answer his question : What is the significance of the rather tame, and apparently irrelevant, little incident which follows, the conversation with Mrs. Bell ? It is sometimes said that Mrs. Bell serves to give a bit of delayed exposition or even to point the story by gaining sympathy for Andreson, who is, to her, "an awfully nice man," not at all like her idea of a pugilist. But this is not enough to satisfy the keen reader, and he is right in refusing to be satisfied with this. Mrs. Bell is, really, the Porter at Hell Gate in Macbeth. She is the world of normality, which is shocking now from the very fact that it continues to flow on in its usual course. To her, Ole Andreson is just a nice man , despite the fact that he has been in the ring; he ought to go out and take his walk on such anice day. She points to his ordinary individuality, which is in contrast to the demands of the mechanical code. Even if the unreal horror of the movie thriller has become real, even if the hunted man lies upstairs on his bed trying to make up his mind to go out, Mrs. Bell is still Mrs. Bell. She is not Mrs. Hirsch. Mrs. Hirsch owns ine place, she just looks after it for Mrs. Hirsch. She is Mrs. Bell. At the door of the rooming house Nick has met Mrs. Bell - normality unconscious of the ironical contrast it presents. Back at the lunchroom, Nick returns to the normal scene, but the normal scene conscious of the impingement of horror. It is the same old lunchroom, with George and the cook going about their business. But they, unlike Mrs. Bell, know what has happened. Yet even they are scarcely deflected from their ordinary routine. George and the cook represent two different levels of response to the situation. The cook, from the first, has wanted no part of it. When he hears Nick’s voice, on his return, he says, "I 22 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book 1!don’t even listen to it." And he shuts the door. But George had originally suggested that Nick go see Andreson, telling him, however, "Don’t go if you don’t want to." After Nick has told his story, George can comment, "It’s a hell of a thing," but George, in one sense at least, has accepted the code, too. When Nick says : "I wonder what he did ?" George replies, with an echo of the killers’ own casualness : "Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for." In other words, the situation is shocking to the cook only in so far as it involves his own safety. George is aware of other implications but can dismiss them. For neither of them, does the situation mean the discovery of evil. But for Nick, it is the discovery, for he has not yet learned to take George's adult advice : "Well, you better not think about it." To this point the discussion of "The Killers" has been concerned with the structure of the story with regard to the relations among incidents and with regard to the attitudes of the characters. But there remain as important questions such items as the following : What is Hemingway's attitude toward his material ? How does this attitude find its expression ? Perhaps the simplest approach to these questions may be through a consideration of the situations and characters which interest Hemingway. These situations are usually violent ones : the hard-drinking and sexually promiscuous world of The Sun Also Rises; the chaotic and brutal world of war as in A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, or "A Way You'll Never Be"; the dangerous and exciting world of the bull ring or the prize ring as in The Sun Also Rises, Death in the Afternoon, "The Undefeated," "Fifty Grand"; the world of crime, as in "The Killers," To Have and to Have Not, or "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio." Hemingway’s typical characters are usually tough men, experienced in the hard worlds they inhabit, and apparently insensitive : Lieutenant Henry in A Farewell to Arms, the big-game hunter in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, or even Ole Andreson. They are, also, usually defeated men. Out of their practical defeat, however, they have managed to salvage something. And here we come upon Hemingway's basic interest in such situations and such characters. They are not defeated except upon their own terms; some of them have even courted defeat; certainly, they have maintained, even in the practical defeat, an ideal READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book II - 23of themselves, formulated or unformulated, by which they have lived. Hemingway's attitude is, ina sense, like that of Robert Louis Stevenson, as Stevenson states it in one of his essays, "Pulvis et Umbra" : "Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives : who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous ? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues : ... an ideal of decency, to which he would risé if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop ... Manis indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to Strive; and surely we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from which success is banished, our race should not cease tolabor... It matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by campfires in Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he for all that, simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; ... in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of honor and the touch of pity, often repaying the world’s scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, rejecting riches; - everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man’s ineffectual goodness under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without health, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls ! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom, they are condemned to some nobility ..." 24 - READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book IIFor Stevenson, the world in which this drama is played out is, objectively considered, a violent and meaningless world - "our rotary island loaded with predatory life and more drenched with blood ... than ever mutinied ship, scuds through space." This is Hemingway's world, too. But its characters, at least those whose story Hemingway cares to‘tell, make one gallant effort to redeem the incoherence and meaninglessness of this world : they attempt to impose some form upon the disorder of their lives, the ‘technique of the bullfighter or sportsman, the discipline of the soldier, the code of the gangster, which, even though brutal and dehumanizing, has its own ethic. (Ole Andreson is willing to take his medicine without whining. Or the dying Mexican in "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" refuses to squeal, despite the detective’s argument : "One can, with honor, denounce one’s assailant.") The form is never quite adequate to subdue the world, but the fidelity to it is part of the gallantry of defeat. It has been said above that the typical Hemingway character is tough and, apparently, insensitive. But only apparently, for the fidelity to acode, to a discipline, may be an index to a sensitivity which allows the characters to see, at moments, their true plight. At times, and usually at times of stress, it is the tough man, for Hemingway, the disciplined man, who actually is aware of pathos or tragedy. The individual toughness (which may be taken to be the private discipline demanded by the world), may find itself in conflict with some more natural and spontaneous human emotion; in contrast with this the discipline may, even, seem to be inhuman; but the Hemingway hero, though he is aware of the claims of this spontaneous human emotion, is afraid to yield to those claims because he has learned that the only way to hold on to "honor", to individuality, to, even, the human order as against the brute chaos of the world, is to live by his code. This is the irony of the situation in which the hero finds himself. Hemingway's heroes are aristocrats in the sense that they are the initiate, and practice a lonely virtue. Hemingway’s heroes utter themselves, not in rant and bombast, but in terms of ironic understatement. This understatement, stemming from the contrast between the toughness and the sensitivity, the violence and the sensitivity, is a constant aspect of Hemingway's READINGS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Book I! - 25